Final answer:
The process of verifying a user's credentials is known as authentication. It confirms a user's identity and is different from authorization, which determines access permissions. Encryption and decryption involve the coding and decoding of data, respectively.
Step-by-step explanation:
The process of verifying a user's credentials is known as authentication. This is a security measure used to confirm that a person or entity is actually who they claim to be, typically involving a username and password, but it can also include other methods like biometrics or security tokens. In contrast, authorization refers to the process of determining whether a user has permission to access a certain resource or perform a specific operation. Whereas, encryption is the act of converting plain text into a coded form to prevent unauthorized access, and decryption is the process of converting this encoded data back into its original form.